with the terrible history Jews have, why is Israel behaving like this?

[ssd]

I would have thought they would be showing more compassion for a repressed minority but the opposite is happening

and Netanyahu saying they told the Palestinians to leave because they were going to be fired on...where the bloody hell would they go to?? IF THEY COULD GO AT ALL

You've answered your own question, OP.

What Israel is doing is trying to show the Palestinians that there is a terribly high price to pay for supporting Hamas. What the Palestinians (ordinary people) are being asked is how high a price are they willing to pay for being represented by Hamas. Israel has never accepted Hamas in power on her borders.

It is a sledgehammer approach similar to what Margaret Thatcher did in NI during the 80s hunger strikes and massive policing presence, and before that what was done by the policy of Internment in the 70s, also in NI. The risk of forcing Palestinians to choose is that Israel is sowing dragons' teeth. That is a risk Israel is willing to take as Israel does not believe there will ever be a time when the Muslim Middle East will ever accept the state of Israel or be anything but hostile in varying degrees -- she is damned if she does and damned if she doesn't in extremist Muslim eyes. Israel is also willing to take this risk if she feels she can inflict heavy casualties on Hamas. She also wants to shore up Palestine against ISIS in the event Iraq falls and ISIS spills west. So there are short term and long term gains possible. And the risks can't be helped.

Israel counts on the neutrality or even outright support of Egypt, whose Army-led government has set its face against its predecessor the Muslim Brotherhood. And despite the grumblings of some on Capitol Hill, and realisation of the perception that Israel is showing up the US as a charlatan on the world stage, the US will not permit a Hamas or extremist victory against Israel.

*The Muslim Brotherhood was behind the rise of Hamas.

Good summary, math... But Israel must realise that this sort of brutality drives more Palestinians to Hamas. Israel seems to have a need to escalate situations far beyond what is necessary or justifiable.

If Israel had kept roughly to the 1947 borders or at least not occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip from 1967 then she would probably have been at peace for decades. Every time the Israelis escalate like this they make their future more dangerous, not less.

How can Israel say it is defending itself by bombing the most populated area of Gaza? In Gaza there are no shelters for children to go to like they have in Israel. The shocking pictures from yesterday made me cry.
US validates this by commenting on the bombings and saying how horrible it is but the adding to the end of the statement 'Israel has the right to defend itself' . So they carry on killing civilians. This conflict will never end.

This isn't about religion. It's about occupation and oppression and forcing people to live in refugee camps and then literally bombing the life out of them if Israel didn't inflict such persecution on the palestinians for decades there would be no Hamas.

Israel harp on about targeting Hamas but really they are carrying out the pulverisation of Gaza and obliteration of palestinians.

This is nothing to do with religion. Most jews especially orthodox ones oppose israel and palestinians are not all muslim. There are many Christian palestinians too.

There are no "good" and "bad" sides in this - and no answer that I can see.
I suppose the killing will keep on until they get tired of it, or there is no-one left on either side.

Of course there is blame on both sides but I get angry at the media's systematic bias towards Israel. On newsnight they said that 100,000s of Palestinians lost their homes when Israel was established in 1948. They made it sound as though the owners fell behind on their mortgage payments. In reality, close to 800,000 people, had been uprooted and 531 villages destroyed. Ancient Olive groves destroyed. farms bulldozed. Nothing short of Ethnic cleansing but d'you think the beeb would dare call it that?

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cartoon/2014/jul/21/first-dog-gaza

In very simplistic terms (because that's all my brain will cope with) my understanding is: the same bit of land was promised to both the Israelis and the Palestinians. The Palestinians were also promised that they wouldn't lose land in the arrangement which proved to be totally not the case. So ever since both sides have been fighting a land/boundary dispute (no proper boundaries were ever draw up which also was far from helpful.)

Ever since Israel has been trying to safeguard their land and the Palestinians get back what was their land. To make matters worse some ultra orthodox Israelis are creating settlements in Palestinian areas which is against existing laws.

Jews in Israel were refugees and have now in turn created another nation of refugees. I guess they are so desperate to hang on to what they have and will (and do) anything to protect what they see as their homeland. It doesn't seem to figure that they are putting the Palestinians through a similar experience to the terrible one they themselves were subjected to.

Israel has a very finely honed early warning system, a very efficient set of procedures to get people into shelters and protect their civilians. Gaza does not so far more civilians there fall victim to Israeli attacks. Some say that it suits Palestinian propaganda to have dead civilians because it makes Israel look even worse in the eyes of the world. Some say that they embed their leaders, key buildings in civilian areas to make it harder for Israeli's to not kill Palestinian civilians when they attack justifiable targets. Whether this is true I don't know.

I'm Jewish but not Israeli or Zionist. I cannot see there being an end to this mess. The original apportionment of land has seen to that I reckon.

The same bit of land wasn't promised to both. Palestinians lived there, European jews went there after ww2 although there were a few Jewish people already there living peacefully amongst Arabs.

Over the next 6 ddecades israel systematically expelled palestinians from their homes and illegally grabbed land and resources. This is the final 25 miles that they want, but they must kill the remaining palestinians first.

Thanks babbas, didn't realise that.

babbas the National Report is a (self-identifed) satirical website, not a genuine newspaper. The clue is the report that Israel is building 'concentration camps' and will be authorizing 'pogroms' .

Israel may or may not be building detention camps, and it may or may not be planning attacks on refugees but the Israeli government would never, ever be putting out policy statements about 'concentration camps' and 'pogroms', whatever it was planning.

What Israel is doing is trying to show the Palestinians that there is a terribly high price to pay for supporting Hamas. What the Palestinians (ordinary people) are being asked is how high a price are they willing to pay for being represented by Hamas. Israel has never accepted Hamas in power on her borders.

I don't know if this is opinion or just a statement of how it is, mathan (unfortunately, I think this is the opinion Israel has), but I don't believe every Palestinian supports Hamas.

I don't support Hamas either, but how can they have a proper leadership when they have been forced out of their homes by settlers? Most of them live in refugee camps, hardly seems a priority to set up a fully-functioning government, if they could. It's ridiculous to think that it's a test to see how much the Palestinians want to "pay" for supporting Hamas. I think they just want their home back.

I've posted a lot on the other threads about this, but put simply, I think Netanyahu is a complete nutter, and the UN needs to step up and stop Israel's terror campaign. Although I'm fully aware that will never happen.

Fate, the last part of that article made me particularly sad (as well as the main content, and of course, the photo), as it goes to show that Israel will never acknowledge that what they're doing is committing a war crime of gargantuan proportions.
Genocide isn't a joke but this soldier (who took the photograph) in particular doesn't seem to understand that. What an evil man.

Shine What are you hoping to gain by posting random statements from people opposing Israel? I could find equal ones supporting Israel. It doesn't make either of them right.

I hate what is going on now. I would like to return to live in Israel - where I used to feel at home - because I had a wonderful life there but I never will until this war or land ends.

I hate these discussions too because people cannot come up with rational arguments, become very offensive and then go on their anti religion crusade. This is a war of land, not religion.

I think it is not a question of why Israel behaves like this, it is more a question of why the rest of the world lets it.

And I think the answer is in your question OP, most of the world sees Israel=Jews. The Jewish people have been persecuted for centuries to a greater or lesser extent have been / still are persecuted as a race not a religion. It didn't matter if you converted to another faith, you were still Jewish.

Some When Israel first became a state it was a place of safety for anyone who was Jewish regardless of their religious beliefs if that makes sense. Eg the Kibbutz system was based on communism and the first people to set them up were atheists.

I think in more recent years the people who have emigrated to Israel have tended to be more religious and that means people who believe their right to live on certain land is ordained by God, and, in some cases that they are superior to other humans.

As has already been stated, Israel is a democracy, and who are these people going to vote for? Politicians who agree with them.

Add to this the moderate Jewish people, some of whom have posted on MN in the last few days, or have written in Newspapers and actively distanced themselves from Israel and have no wish to live there and you get a situation where the world sees Israel as not just Jewish but particularly religious Jewish people and criticism of Israel becomes synonymous with antisemitism.

Not all Israelis are Jewish though, I believe 20-30% are of other faiths / ethnicities, but the world seems to ignore this.

I wonder how many of the children Israel has killed in the last week (70 at last count) supported Hamas. Israel wants to wipe Palestine off the face of the planet and is gradually doing so - see maps from 1967 to date. They use the defensive thing to justify bombing the shit out of Gaza and the West Bank, but what excuse do they have for illegal settlements, bulldozing peoples homes, destroying ancient olive groves that supply prolixity living for many, destroying power stations, preventing freedom of movement for Palestinians and cutting off their water?

Let's get this straight - the Zionists call all Palestinians Hamas supporters to justify their system of apartheid and crimes against humanity (which they were found to have committed during Operation Cast Lead and Operation Pillar of Defense). It is beyond belief that a people who were the victims of unthinkable horrors can perpetrate this.

sashh There's actually a sub-sector of Judaism that does not believe in the state of Israel at all. I don't feel that criticising Israel makes you anti-Semitic although I have had heard rather scathing comments that are utterly unacceptable.

Israel was created by and funded by the west.

That is why we are so shocked by their behaviour.

When a Palestinian living in shit and constant threat of death throws a rocket into Israel (not one of which has actually killed anyone might I add) and it makes a little dent in the concrete, people can understand it because the Palestinians are living in a prisoner of war camp and slowly being blown/starved to death.

When Israel retaliates by sending a rocket that destroys a tower block and kills 50 children, they don't get any sympathy because their reaction is totally over the top and they aren't the ones living in hell.

"It is beyond belief that a people who were the victims of unthinkable horrors can perpetrate this."

It's bullshit like this that makes my blood boil. Go and educate yourself on the difference between Zionism and Judaism before you make statements like that.

Teh best article I ever read about this was by Daniel Finkelstein in The Times. As it is behind a pay wall, I will quote from it:

"...what happened to my grandmother shows the dangers of Mans inhumanity to Man and the need to avoid it. But that is not the only lesson it teaches. And not the only lesson Jews have learnt.

When the Nazis invaded Holland, and arrested my family in their home, and stole their property, and killed their friends, and destroyed their community, and put them on trains to go to death camps, they were able to do it because they had the army and the soldiers and the guns. They were able to do it because the Jews were defenceless. They were able to do it because speeches and books and ideas about liberty, for all their great truth and power, werent enough.

How could the Jews not have learnt that lesson? How could they not have learned it... when they went home to the East of Europe and found they couldnt live in their houses or reclaim their property or be safe with their neighbours? How could they not have learnt it sailing round and round the harbour because no country wanted to take them?

The Jews have learnt the same lesson as everyone else about humanity and compassion, and been as good and as fallible as anyone else when trying to show it. But we have also understood a harder, harsher truth. That we cannot rely on others to keep us safe. And Israel exists precisely because of this."